March 27, 2008
Campuses Turn to Sirens as Part of Upgraded Emergency Alert Systems
An informal survey on an e-mail list for college technology leaders this week confirmed a growing interest in installing sirens on college campuses to enhance emergency-notification systems. A free Chronicle article this week found that more than a dozen colleges have installed such systems in the past year.
The quick survey of members of an Educause e-mail list identified at least 14 campuses that have outdoor siren systems, most of which can also deliver spoken messages that can be heard over a wide area of campus. Another nine colleges said they are in the process of setting up a siren system. Two colleges said they were not interested — one because the college is in an urban area where officials deemed it would not be effective, and another that said it is situated in a residential area.
As of the fall of 2007, about 23 percent of campuses said they had a siren system, according to the Campus Computing Project, an annual survey of how colleges use information technology. But the number of campuses with sirens seems to have grown since then, as colleges have reviewed their emergency-notification strategies in the wake of the deadly shootings at Virginia Tech last spring. That tragedy, in which a student killed 32 people before committing suicide, led many administrators to imagine how they would communicate with their diverse mix of students, professors, and staff members if a similar tragedy took place on their campuses.
One official who answered the e-mail survey this week warned that the outdoor siren systems do not do a good job of getting a message to people inside of buildings, since the sound does not always carry clearly into buildings. And many officials interviewed by The Chronicle this month said that sirens should be part of a broader alert strategy that includes other technologies — including text-message systems and old-fashioned telephone hotlines for emergencies.
Does your campus have a siren system? Are they worth the cost? —Jeffrey R. Young
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Our campus is in the process of implementing a siren system, which is separate from the city-wide alert system. It can broadcast tones as well as spoken messages, but the spoken messages are nearly impossible to understand from a distance. Also, there has been no training in what different tones mean.
I am hoping that the university is still in the early stages of implementation. If not, it is definitely a waste of money, no matter how much it cost.
— Sara Mar 27, 05:21 PM #
The famous past as the infamous prologue, what?
— Dag von Lubitz Mar 27, 05:49 PM #
Behold His next abomination: The Protector-Regent gives unto the as yet smooth-browed herd… The Tragedy Siren.
Duck and Cover, boys and girls for we know not for whom the “Tragedy Siren” wails and yelps and hi-los its 130 decibel fear mongering sound/message.
—- —- —-
You paraphrase an “official” who worries that “outdoor siren systems” aren’t powerful enough to convey a message to the “people inside of buildings.”
NOW HEAR THIS:
“PEOPLE INSIDE OF BUILDINGS” DO NOT REQUIRE A MESSAGE ORDERING THEM TO GET “INSIDE OF BUILDINGS”!
Parsing this further, one might assume the herd thundering from the outside into the inside might carry the message.
The trouble, daren’t we consider it, lies in this “message.”
Ha! Here’s where we leave the acoustic engineering lab and pop over to visit the Semioticians. What, then, is this message? Are we to assume the Tragedy Siren means to inform that some morally-superior, yet fatally-flawed protagonist’s hamartia has alas propelled him beyond his peripeteia into the present death throes of his anagnorisis wherein he’s spraying the Bursar’s Office with automatic gunfire?
What could possibly be a siren‘s “meaning“? Duck, cover, run, stop, flee, fight, go get your squeeze, go get your gun, wait for bedlam to cease, wait for bedlam to ensue, take video of the kid’s suicidal finale, tremble in place, laugh your ass off, ask for your money back, do your homework, check your e-mail, text your Dad to cancel his alumni subscription… or what?
And, of course, we all know… Where there’s a siren, there’s a choreographer champing at his bit to begin “drills.”
What sentient and decent human being needs help from a siren to know how to behave at a massacre? Arguably, massacres, mêlées, catastrophes, hurricanes and riots may just provide the ideal “events” in which to show the world, in the raw Sartrean sense, just who you are.
C’mon kids. Yes, it’s all a crap shoot. Don’t let ’em scare ya into thinking surveillance and sirens help your odds. You can handle whatever comes your way: after all, that’s supposed to be the benefit of all that expensive book-learin’.
— Peter Cook Mar 27, 11:10 PM #
How does the outdoor siren ensure the safety of hearing-impaired faculty/students/personnel?
I had an office once next door to a deaf colleague and when the fire alarm went off for a simple drill, I got a chill up my spine as I saw her sitting there calmly in her office, oblivious to it all.
In general, colleges are aware of who are the hearing impaired among their staff and students (they are supposed to be providing them with reasonable accommodation under the ADA and Section 504, after all).
So, does their safety matter in a hearing-based alert system?
As for the deaf instructor at my former college, well, the “solution” proposed when I complained to the top was that the campus security would come to her door to get her in a drill or an emergency (since both of their offices were in the same building). Next drill came; no campus security came. And by the end of the school year, there was no more deaf instructor to inform; her contract wasn’t renewed.
I trust that the CHE can spark a more meaningful discussion of the safety of the hearing-impaired in a siren-alerted campus world.
— Concerned citizen Mar 28, 09:06 PM #